Paper Title: Homelessness and At-Risk Families:
The Characteristics and Causes of Homelessness Among At Risk Families With Children in Twenty American Cities
(full text of paper can be found in Appendix D of this report) Authors: David Reingold and Angela Fertig

Paper Title: Permanent Housing for Homeless Families: A Review of Opportunities and Impediments
(full text of paper can be found in Appendix C of this report) Authors: Jill Khadduri and Bulbul Kaul
Summary of Presentation. The presentation highlighted permanent housing options, subsidies, and other resources offered by programs for l

Following the paper presentations and discussions, the group discussed how best to proceed with the task of typology development. The following general guidelines emerged from the discussion.
The two top goals for a typology should be a focus on prevention (in hopes of minimizing the population) and resource allocation. From the Federal perspect

The panelists emphasized the importance of identifying the goal of a typology before beginning to develop one. Different goals would demand different designs and more than one goal could translate into multiple typologies that need to be developed. It was agreed that more than one typology was needed to inform the policy world.

The discussion of research studies focused on the advantages and disadvantages of longitudinal and cross-sectional designs . Some participants argued that cross-sectional designs are not helpful because they confound those who remain homeless with those who are newly homeless. It was suggested that a longitudinal study that followed first-time ho

First, the panelists thought it was important to know how large a typology is needed-that is, how many variables should be considered? The caution was to keep it simple and focus on variables that provide the most differentiation. A good typology should have practical utility, be easy to derive from the data, and have the ability to predict futu

To guide the conceptualization of the typology, a one-day Expert Panel meeting was held in Washington, DC on July 25, 2005. Experts in homeless families research, homelessness research in general, welfare, and typology development were invited to participate along with several Federal representatives. The Expert Panelists discussed what constitute

Whatever the purpose of a typology, its development entails a series of decisions and choices that require comprehensive knowledge of the population, the research that produced the knowledge, and the tradeoffs with the available approaches to typology development. There are several gaps in the knowledge of the overall homeless family population th

Although there has been some limited attention to typologies for homeless families (e.g., Danesco and Holden, 1998) the literature that is most helpful involves efforts to develop typologies and classification systems for a range of populations, including individuals who abuse substances (e.g., Epstein et al., 2002; German and Sterk, 2002), indivi

The literature review provides a broad understanding of what is known about homeless families from the research conducted to date and offers a foundation for developing a typology of homeless families. There are also, as noted next, a number of unanswered questions about the population that may be important to address in moving forward. However, t

Research indicates that homeless children have high rates of both acute and chronic health problems. They are more likely than their poor housed counterparts to be hospitalized, to have delayed immunizations, and to have elevated blood lead levels (Alperstein, Rappaport, and Flanigan, 1988; Parker et al., 1991; Rafferty and Shinn, 1991; Weinreb et

Homeless mothers and their families face a number of challenges and problems, some that may stem from being homeless and others that may have contributed to becoming homeless. Homeless mothers, for instance, have more acute and chronic health problems than the general population of females under 45 years of age.

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